The old definition of human resources (HR) as the staff, tools, and services you require to enable you to manage the workforce in your organization does not suffice again. What obtains today, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic experience, demands that there must be a new definition for human resources.
Taking away work from the physical workspace means integrating new technologies, tools, and apps. The definition of the new HR must take this digital transformation and trends into cognizance.
Human resources have always been seen as a department; however, the new human resources definition must transcend that. Apart from the essential core functions of HR, the new HR definition must consider a lot of emerging realities.
HR must essentially focus on how to improve the overall lifestyle of employees effectively. To make sure this happens in 2022 and years beyond, HR must integrate new technologies. The following technology trends are what you need to look out for in 2022 and the years ahead.
Extensive deployment of AI
The increasing competitiveness in the business landscape is not limited to marketing or production alone; it cuts across all the sections and departments in an organization. For HR, the capability to hire and retain the best in the market to meet up with the competition will now take a heavy toll.
But, it’s a task that must be accomplished if you still want to remain relevant. Your customers won’t want to have anything less than what others are offering.
HR in 2022 and beyond will go all out to ensure significantly improved employee and candidate experiences while processing recruitment, onboarding, and operations function promptly and with precision and personalization. Since this will not be easy with ordinary human labor, we shall see the acceleration of AI deployment for quicker outcomes.
These are some ways AI will play significant roles in HR from 2022 and beyond:
Real-time availability
AI will enhance real-time and around-the-clock availability. Many businesses have been using chatbots for customer service. However, the highly improved AI-assisted conversational chatbots that can easily simulate person-to-person conversation will become a trend in HR.
In the hybrid or remote setting that HR now operates, chatbots will readily give real-time responses to issues that may arise with candidates and employees about recruitment, onboarding, and benefit concerns.
Automation of repetitive processes
AI will also play a very vital role in the area of automating HR processes. Many tasks HR carries out are repetitive and transactional; these tasks are usually time-consuming and distract HR from other assignments that can add more value to the organization. AI will come in 2022 as your intelligent partner to help your HR team become more efficient and productive.
Personalization of information
Apart from your subscribers, even employees and candidates want to receive personalized messages and updates. The volume of messaging you send can be overwhelming, but the integration of AI will ensure that you can send personalized communications to all business users.
This is irrespective of their geographical locations, demographics, and preferences. AI algorithms and predictive analytics can be deployed to enhance the segmentation of employees and candidates into groups based on the data you have about them.
This also enables you to send personalized information to them in real-time to be ahead of the competition. The HR team will start relying heavily on AI for data analysis.
Big data
Big data will be vital in ensuring the identification of repeating trends and issues. Analyzing large volumes of data has gone beyond what human labor can do. HR teams need big data to handle and have the requisite insights into employees’ and candidates’ repetitive questions at scale.
Having insight into the concerns of employees and candidates, especially when they keep reoccurring, enables HR to address the issues promptly.
Increased rate of digital savviness among employees
Digital transformation is moving at incredible speeds across the business world; this transcends industries and departments. Customers want better experiences, and organizations want to add value.
The execution of digital transformation initiatives revolves around employees, and they must have the necessary digital mindset. HR has a big role to play as the section that oversees hiring, onboarding, and training.
Getting employees with a digital mindset and savviness is instrumental to your organization’s survival and market relevance. The trend in 2022 will focus on hiring and onboarding employees to attain digital savviness to handle digital tools that can enable them to improve operational efficiency, add more value to customers and the organization, increase collaboration, especially in a hybrid working environment, create new business models, and ultimately increase ROI.
What HR will have to focus on is ensuring that the workforce gradually gets to acquire the relevant digital experience; new technologies, tools, and apps that may run into hundreds may have to come into the picture to ensure smooth processes.
Employees and potential employees will need to have a good grasp of collaboration tools and platforms. Updating information that resides in the cloud requires an extra bit of effort. They must be armed with the knowledge necessary to do so, and the buck stops on the HR table.
While a lot of these activities had never been the responsibility of HR, the new HR definition must consider these. Everything about the well-being of employees and potential employees must become the focus of the new HR definition.
2022 will see HR seriously delving into the usability and efficiency of digital tools; HR will bolster the employee’s digital experience. It’s a year that attention will shift towards how to make the employee a better digital person.
